


The Girl at the Window

by Cumbersome



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:14:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24058075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cumbersome/pseuds/Cumbersome
Summary: The coffee shop AU no one asked for. Nuff said?
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Black Lestrange
Comments: 28
Kudos: 146





	The Girl at the Window

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lesbinope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbinope/gifts).



Bellatrix begins the morning like she does any other; with a scream. 

Back arching, toes stretching, face stuffed in a pillow, she screams out of the sheer satisfaction of a good muscle stretch. She holds the pose, wailing until she feels her body’s resistance dissolve. She sighs, allowing her spine to relax and flatten against the mattress. She removes the pillow from her mouth, blowing a curl out of her eye. She could use a cigarette after that one. 

She nearly exits her body with a painful jolt as a fist hammers on the other side of her bedroom wall. 

“Every mornin’ wit yeh!” comes the enraged voice of her neighbor, filtering through the thin wall that separates them. 

Arnold Getoffer is a real cunt. His breath smells of eggs bombarded by festering, thermonuclear disease. He has the unfortunate mug of a slapped fish, all gaping, shiny lips and bulging eyes shot through with furious red veins. He wears the same shirt every day; a dingy grey thing that hangs nearly in shreds over his thin shoulders. His fingertips are nicotine stained. And rather than pants, his only modesty is a saggy pair of yellowed, not so whitey tighties - they are a sight to behold, a sad garment doomed to a purgatory of shrinking desperately away from what one can clearly see is a very loose set of testicles and a rather sad bit of flaccid baby sausage. 

Those loose assed undies in mind, Bellatrix jumps up onto the bed, gripping the headboard as she pounds back on the wall. 

“Shut yer filthy gob!” She shouts. 

“Coom make meh, ya cunt!” He cries. “Yeh’ll do nofink! Daffy minge licker!” 

Bellatrix freezes, hand poised mid bash. She mouths _minge licker_ to herself with a look of utter bafflement. 

“What do you know about minge, you celibate twat refuse!” she shouts.

“More’n yeh, yeh droopy bittied hag!” 

She gasps, grabbing her breasts. “Don’t listen to him,” she speaks down into her cleavage. “You’re as perky as a pair of cheerleaders snorting cocaine off a toilet seat in a strip club, you are.” 

“Wrinkled bag ah gritty mole hairs!” Arnold screams. 

Bellatrix flips off the wall with a parting shot of, “Not what yer Mam said when I was at hers last night, ya crusty wank stain!” 

She smiles as the pounding resumes on the wall, screams of rage screeching from behind the plaster. She gives a happy sigh; ahhhh, male rage. Practically makes her drip, that does.

A shower and a glare in the mirror later, she is out the door, making her way down the street at a fast clip. She pauses next to Arnold’s trash fire of a vehicle. Giving a surreptitious glance at her surroundings, she casually leans down to lace her boot. While she is there, somehow, her hand retrieves the pocket knife from her back pocket. She flicks it open and a smirk later Arnold’s tire is hissing and spitting and collapsing and she is swaggering on her merry way, her hands shoved deep in her pockets and a grin all but splitting her face in half. 

The Starbucks is tucked on the hipsterest of hipster streets, in between a sushi restaurant and a kimchi taco stand. An air of dread descends on the staff as Bellatrix palms open the door, several heads suddenly disappearing, cups clattering. 

There’s a new one at the front. Smiling happily, like it’s their fucking birthday and their mammy sent them a fiver in a Hello Kitty card. 

Bellatrix takes a deep breath, mentally scrolling through her wrack of facial expressions with a discerning tap to the lips. She settles on “murderous loony who drinks virgin blood from monkey skulls”. She widens her eyes, straining them until they twitch. Her nostrils flare, her lips flatten. She drops her shoulders, loosening her stance, and skitters with nervous energy across the floor to the counter. 

The girl’s name tag says “Karen.” Leaning practically over the counter, Bellatrix shoves her face close to the tag, blinking furiously. 

There’s a reversal, Bella thinks, eyes twitching. 

She glances at the girl’s hair and sneers. Angular bitch cut, check. Look of terrified indignity, check check!

“C-can-can I help you?” Karen says. 

Bellatrix grips the counter until her knuckles turn white. “I don’t know, can you?” 

Karen’s face drains of color, her throat bobbing as she swallows, her blue eyes shiny with uncertainty. 

Bellatrix gives herself a mental high five. “Want to try again?” 

“U-uh….” 

Bellatrix lets a full body twitch spasm through her body. “Coffee, black. Caramel roast.” 

Karen stutters and nods. “Anything else?” 

Bellatrix’s eyes are the blackness inside Death’s screaming mouth. “Did I say I was finished?” 

“Oh my god,” Karen says. 

“Also, since you asked so nicely, Karen, I’ll have a grande iced caramel macchiato with 10 pumps of sugar free vanilla and 17 Splenda packets. And on top, whipped cream decorated with 10 red edible pearls in the shape of a knight fighting on dragon back. Want me to repeat that?” 

Karen has turned the shade of a coronary attack. A trickle of sweat beads and rolls down the thin blue vein standing out against her temple. “Dragon back?” 

“Something against dragons? Are you a dragon racist, Karen?” 

Karen squeaks.

“Fine,” Bellatrix says, eyes nearly crossing with apparent rage. “Make it a heart. Can you handle that, Karen?” 

Karen nods frantically. 

“Well? Why are you still staring at me, Karen?” 

“Name?” Karen mouth breathes as if she is three seconds away from dissolving into a puddle of teeth and bleached blonde hair. 

“Bellatrix.” 

“C-can you spell that?” 

Bellatrix feigns offense. “Spell it? Are you daft? Sound it out. Or shall I come back there and show you?” 

Karen stiff legs it from the counter at the pace of a bullet train late for dinner. 

Supremely satisfied, Bellatrix relaxes her face and turns to survey the shop, her back leant against the counter. 

That is when she sees her. 

She sits at the same window every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Elbows leaned on the edge of the table, fingers dug into her hair as she pages through a new book each day. 

Today she is wearing high-tops and a loose shirt and she’s taken off her watch and set it alongside her drink. She has one hand on the back of her neck, kneading the muscles as her eyes scan over the pages of her book. 

Brown eyes. Like melted chocolate and a starless night sky swirling together in the sweetest of mirrors. Expressive brows dipping as she reads something that interests her. Lips parting a bit with a breath of amusement. Trailing her fingertips over her throat when she reads something she likes. Tapping the book impatiently when she disagrees. 

Her hands. Delicate wrists, traces of pale blue veins beneath the skin. A faint scar on her knuckle. The bones fine, the fingers long. An artist’s hands, capable of creating a constellation of burning stars and new suns and anything you can dream. But with a frivolous energy to them, likely to brush it all away in a sweep of dissatisfaction and self loathing.

Bellatrix bites her lip. She doesn’t know her name, but she could watch her for hours. She could sit and read her, cataloging every gesture, every breath. She could break her apart to her individual sums, pushing through those bright thoughts and dark traces of soul until she has her written cleanly, all of her laid out in ink and passion. 

She can’t be sure how the girl caught her eye. One day she was simply there, sitting across the room, and everything about her was like the pull of gravity, inevitable, precisely perfect in a loss of control. 

Looking at her, she feels powerless. She is a jumbled mess of nerves, her teeth bit into the tip of her tongue, her palms turning cold with sweat. The girl at the window is a fiery beacon. She has the promise of immortality tangled around her tongue, the surety of long nights spent wrapped up in burning sheets, touching skin so soft it hurts. 

She is a heartbreak waiting to happen and Bellatrix wants desperately to feel. She would take any amount of pain if only for a moment of pleasure with her, sharp and metallic on her tongue, all of it painted in golds and blues and lost chances. 

“U-u-Uhm.” 

Bellatrix’s face closes, loses that dreamy daze. 

Fucking Karen. 

She turns, face tight as she looks down at the cups Karen so tentatively offers. She stares. She leans back, squinting. 

She points at the name on the cup in Karen’s left hand. “That is wrong.” 

“What? You haven’t even tried it! I made it perfectly.” 

“The name, you goose.” 

Blinking, Karen turns the cup to look at the name. 

_Bellatricks_ listed in a thick, Karenish scrawl. Like a bleeding toddler’s crayon scribbles. 

“I don’t understand,” Karen stutters. 

Snarling, Bellatrix snatches the cups away from the panicked girl. “Tricks are for kids, arsehole.” 

Without further fuss, she spins on her heel, shoving the iced caramel macchiato into the chest of the man waiting behind her. 

“Here,” she says. “Have some diabetes.” 

She leaves Karen in a shuddering mess of a leaking nose and gibbering spit bubbles. 

Today is the day. She feels it. Certainly one can’t meet destiny if one cowers and yearns silently from the shadows. This requires ovaries of steel and steady resolve. Bold, decisive action. An assault of charm. A bit of the old witty verbal back and forth, because there’s nothing sexier than good conversation, is there? 

She runs through her list of pick up lines.

You’re so hot, my zipper is falling for you?

No, not that one. 

Appeal to her vanity? Maybe something like - Are you a parking ticket? ‘Cause you’ve got fine written all over you!

Confidence - Did you know my lips are like Skittles and you’re about to taste the rainbow?

Fuck it.

She sits down, slapping her cup onto the table. The girl looks up at her, a flash of confusion on her face. 

Bellatrix looks at her. Their eyes meet and it’s like falling off a cliff together, straight into the unknown. 

Her blood heats up and her chest tightens and she burns, every inch of her body radioactive and glowing and buzzing. 

There’s no point; there’s no denying that hunger, that hard twist that is sex and intimacy and every gritty emotion twisting and blistering together. 

“Hi,” she says. She holds out her hand. “I’m Bellatrix.” 

The girl smiles. Sunlight in her eyes, her index finger marking her place in the book on the table, she looks at Bellatrix and it’s like the entire world opens up. It’s like learning to dance. It’s like cold waves on the beach at midnight, time frozen, the entire word asleep, just you and her and everything that stands between you - Burning in that thin space between your bodies, an anticipation like the sweetest of tensions, the harshest relief. There’s sweat on your skin and it feels like your bodies were made for one another, colliding in a way that lasts forever in the glimmer behind your eyes.

All of that in seconds, and the girl places her hand in hers. 

“Hermione,” she says. 

Bellatrix smiles.


End file.
